


Domesticity Isn't Simple

by Nehszriah



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Mild Smut, Post-Episode: 2015 Xmas The Husbands of River Song, Prompt Fic, Smut, attempts at conception, failed attempt at conception, oh and Nardole's in it for all of two seconds, plenty of reference to Clara and Whouffaldi and River not giving two shits, the Darillium Years, working at a linear marriage is weird for these two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 17:05:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7766113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nehszriah/pseuds/Nehszriah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From a tumblr prompt: Twelve and River deciding "what the hell, let's have a baby" since they have 24 linear years together and finding out trying to actually conceive a child is much more emotional and complex then either had anticipated.</p>
<p>A majorly-Twelve/River story with plenty of Twelve/Clara sentiment thrown in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Domesticity Isn't Simple

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first real attempt at Twelve/River within the constructs of canon, which means that any input is appreciated, good or bad.

When he said “twenty-four years”, he really meant twenty-four Darilli years, which were much longer than the Earth years she normally kept personal time with. Then again, what was a couple extra decades or so in the overall scheme of things? They lived in the TARDIS until they could find a proper house, and once they were settled they tried that _domesticity_ thing that they both kept on hearing about, yet never were actually were able to do properly on account of the nature of their relationship.

Okay, so they called it a marriage, and it really was one in name, and had been back when he was a bowtie and floppy hair, but new nerves didn’t respond well to old habits.

“Why were you so happy to see me?” she wondered one evening. They were out at the Harmony and Redemption, sitting at their regular table on the balcony; such an exclusive restaurant had space for the head of the university’s archaeology department and a master songwriter, after all. The Doctor cut into his food and glanced up at River.

“What do you mean?”

“When this face first saw me, back on Mendorax Dellora,” she clarified.

“Oh,” he shrugged, “just happy to see my wife after so long. I thought you were dead before that, after all.”

“Mmmhmm.” She took a sip of wine and continued watching him, gauging his reactions. “You seemed cheery then, yet you’re not like your old face at all.”

“I believe it’s about the sex, sir,” Nardole whispered through the hedge. The Time Lord glared at the foliage, his eyebrows going into full-on attack mode.

“I am not above either murder or genocide, if that fact helps to remind you to _leave us be_ ,” he growled. Nordole skittered off with a squeak and the couple was then actually alone. The Doctor then glanced over at River, his expression softening. “Is it?”

“Partly, I suppose,” she frowned, pursing her lips a little. “I’m perfectly fine on my own for a while if that’s what you need in order to get used to touch again, but it’s more than that.” River saw him raise an eyebrow, silently asking for more information. “You just seem… not as open. Not as flirty. You know… less…”

“…less chin, more grey,” he finished for her. “I was sick of pretending.”

“So I married a construct of your imagination?”

“No, you married me… though you also married _me_ … it’s difficult to explain.”

“Based on the timetable, I’ve got approximately seventy-three years, four months, and twelve days left of time for you to find the words,” she quipped. He continued eating, which only served to irritate her. “Well…?”

“River, we haven’t been around one another long enough to get to this before,” he replied through his food. He quickly cleared his throat when he saw her face, as though she were ready to kill, and began to panic, his hands moving nearly as quick as his mouth. “We’ve been together for a long time, yeah, but not day after day like this, where we’ve technically had _years_ pass. What was the longest time we were together linearly before?”

“About two months.”

“See? A two-month-long date is different than the years that this has been going. Marriage is just one really long date, and sometimes you find things out about your date that you hadn’t anticipated.”

“You have some mileage on you—who doesn’t?”

“This isn’t just _some_ mileage,” he said heavily. He ran a hand through his hair and grimaced. “Can we not talk about this here? I promise, once we’re home—”

“I’d rather us talk about it _now_ ,” she insisted. “You know I care about your time with Clara as much as you care about my time with others; they were good for us at the time, even if they crossed the lines of polygamy and polyandry. This is _now_ , Doctor, so what is it?”

He exhaled, accepting the conversation was not going to simply end like he wanted. “Trenzalore…”

“…which we’ve been over,” she reminded him. “You went through a lot then, but that’s not it.”

“My time there put many things into perspective,” he continued. “I was last of my kind, so lonely, so tired, that when I gained this,” he placed his hand on his chest, “all I wanted was to find Gallifrey more than ever. Once I did, it was like I did all that searching and wanting for nothing.”

“…because they wouldn’t give you Clara back permanently,” she recalled. River knew the story, and that she had the only part of Clara that the Doctor didn’t have—the knowledge of what she looked like—and let it go. It wasn’t clear how long it had been between the confession dial ordeal and when they ran into one another again, but it was clear that it was a sore subject, almost like a harsh widowing. With the way they worked, there wasn’t any point in bringing up others loves, because they were together _now_.

That was the thing: they always seemed to come back together.

“Sort of; so little had changed with them that I still want nothing to do with their rules and castes and bullshit,” he scowled. “They learned nothing… absolutely _nothing_ in their hiding place.”

“Then let’s change that,” she said plainly. She chuckled as her husband blinked at her in confusion. “We can make this our last shared bottle of wine, and when we get home, we’ll kickstart the species anew. That _is_ something you’d like, yeah?”

“River,” he hissed lowly. “You can’t just suggest something like that on a whim. We’re not the sort of couple that has children…”

“Maybe we weren’t, but we could be now,” she offered. “We have a house, a routine, I’m not in prison for your murder…”

“You make it sound so simple.”

“Nothing is simple, love. Give me a bit of credit for knowing that much.” River gave the Doctor a flirty grin and slipped out of a shoe under the table, running her stockinged toes up his trouser leg. His face twitched and he gripped his utensils a bit tighter, though he did not pull his leg away. “We can take it slow, if you’d like… if you need to go slower.”

“Do… do _you_ want children?” he asked.

“I’ve considered it in the past,” she assured him. “Like I said though: we’ve got a different life now, doing this day-to-day thing. You want to, and I don’t mind trying, so what’s the problem?”

“Nothing,” he said, giving her a smile. The Doctor held up his wine glass in a toast, which River mimicked. “To trying.”

“To trying.”

* * *

An hour later and the Doctors Song (or _Mr_. and Doctor Song, as River tended to put it when he was unable to produce an actual doctorate) arrived back home to their quiet house. The Doctor took River’s coat for her and hung it in the cupboard by the door. Their neighborhood was tranquil, ideal for raising a family, now that he thought about it as he glanced around. Although the children would know night their entire lives, there was simulated sunlight in their back garden that went on a twenty-eight Earth-hour schedule that complimented the artificial foliage. He could convince the TARDIS to give up the location of its learning docks so they could have a proper Gallifreyan education without all the nonsense that usually entailed, and…

“What are you thinking about, sweetie?” River asked, snapping him from his train of thought. He glanced over at her, watching her take her earrings out in a nearby mirror. She then began to ease the pins out of her hair, letting her mass of curls bounce freely to her shoulders.

“How viciously large our children’s hair would be,” he lied.

“They would, wouldn’t they?” she agreed. She took his hand and led him up the stairs towards their bedroom. “What do you suppose your hair color would have been had you regenerated a decade or two younger?”

“Brown, probably.”

“Basic answer.”

“It’s the truth—you’ve seen the TARDIS’s files and how I tend to skew towards brown.”

“Doesn’t mean it isn’t uncreative,” she teased.

Once they were in their bedroom, River pulled the Doctor close to her, wrapping his arms around her so that his chest was against her back. He automatically bent down and kissed her neck, which made her produce a satisfied purr.

“Come on, hubby—let’s make a baby.”

Silently the Doctor pulled the zip of River’s dress down, allowing her to step out of the garment with ease. She in turn helped him with the buttons on his shirt and the fastenings of his trousers, his hands far too shaky to do it properly.

They’d already had sex on Darillium a small handful of times, where he was twitchy and giggled inappropriately and seized up when she slid herself onto him, forcing her to do all the work. He would try to block why from her consciousness, but she was certainly a better Time Lady than he a Time Lord in that regard; he would think, deep down on a carefully-hidden layer of his thought processes, about all the times he missed being able to have a family with a more linear love, wondering what she would say if she saw him now and if she could forgive him. In-order was generally how one went about doing the family thing, so it wasn’t necessarily a problem she could blame him for as long as her name was the one he gasped when he finally recalled how to breathe.

This time though, it felt different from the start. He was still a little skittish and trembling, but there was no hint of the undercurrent from before as he held her face and kissed her while they stood naked aside their bed. Instead, as they opened their minds to one another, River felt the weary old man she knew was in her arms. A regular old Cincinnatus, her mother once described him as, and it was clear as to why as she laid out on the bed and pulled him atop her. Capable of such great things, and had _done_ good deeds throughout the ages, but he was still a man who dreamt of peace.

Puttering about, helping people along the way, and entering a house full of children excited that Daddy was back and they wouldn’t have to stay in the learning docks anymore… a wife who had returned home only moments before, teasing him that she had won the race home… patting the TARDIS as it stood dutifully in the corner of the sitting room, knowing her thief was happy and would return to her soon enough…

“River…?”

She opened her eyes and looked up at the Doctor, seeing that his own gaze was one filled with concern. He wiped at the tears on her cheeks tenderly, wondering “Are you sure you want this?”

“Yes,” she said, draping her arms over his shoulders. She threaded her fingers through his fluffy curls and scratched his scalp with her nails. “I just didn’t take you as being _that_ domestic.”

“I have to take care of the wife I have, don’t I?” he posed.

“That you do.”

* * *

They had sex well into the night, waking up to have another go at random intervals, eventually realizing that they shagged away all their crucial energy for the day ahead. Instead the Doctor and River slept in until midday, with him using her hair as a pillow while she laid curled into his side. Timing was something that they’d definitely have to work on, but at that moment, neither of them cared.

Five months of excess sex in varying positions and working on the Doctor’s sensitive reflexes later, and River came home one day humming happily as she clutched the shopping in one hand. The Doctor pretended to not watch her from across the sitting area, idly strumming his guitar as he worked out the melody for a new song. She seemed extra-peppy as she went into the kitchen and put the bags on the table, rummaging through them.

“I thought you hated doing the shopping,” he mentioned.

“Usually I do, but I got sick today during office hours,” she replied, her grin incredibly wide and cat-like. She plucked a box from one of the bags and sauntered through the sitting room, tapping him on the nose with it. “Picked up a test kit while I was out.”

“Are you _sure_?” he questioned. “It’s happened that women have tricked themselves by accident into thinking they’re pregnant while they’re in the middle of trying.”

“I had absolutely no reason to lose my lunch this afternoon and I want to double-check the reason as to why,” River stated. She went into the powder room and shut the door, leaving the Doctor to sit next to the TARDIS and fiddle with the guitar’s tuning.

Five minutes passed. Ten, twenty, thirty… the Doctor finally put down the instrument and went over to the bathroom door, knocking on it gingerly.

“River? How cheap is that kit that it’s taking this long to work?” he asked. When she did not answer, he knocked again. “River…?”

Sighing, he opened up the door to the powder room and saw his wife sitting on the toilet, holding great fists of her hair and looking as though she’d break into sobs at any moment. The Doctor knelt down next to her and gently put a hand on her shoulder, letting her know he was there for her.

“Not that simple, is it?” he mused.

“Bloody thing must be wrong,” she muttered.

He glanced in the bin quickly and shook his head. “Over ninety-nine percent accurate on all documented Darillioids in the quadrant—that includes us.”

“It’s not fair,” she said, fighting back tears. “Mum and Dad had no problem having me; _keeping_ me was another, but having me…”

“…and tried so hard to have a sibling for you,” he reminded her. He then sat down on the tile floor and gently pulled her down next to him, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “On Gallifrey, this would be positively _barbaric_ how we’re going about it.”

“Then maybe we shouldn’t,” she said dully. “Let whatever happens, happen, but not count on it. We would be rubbish parents anyhow.”

“Speak for yourself—my dad skills are top-rate,” he scoffed. She laughed at that, finding it utter ridiculous.

“Liar,” she snarked. “You got you _and_ your granddaughter exiled from Gallifrey once; I’d say those were less-than-top-rate.”

“Dad skills are different from _grand_ dad skills—do keep up,” he chuckled. He pressed a kiss into her hair and left his nose there, taking in the spicy, sultry scent of her perfume.

Maybe they would be rubbish parents, maybe they wouldn’t, who really knew? It wasn’t necessarily something they needed to discover right then and there, and a brush of his mind against hers revealed that she agreed, though didn’t mind continuing the trying process. It was a good thing that at this point, neither did he.


End file.
